


it's like sportsmanlike conduct but for people with better hair

by transversely



Category: Eyeshield 21
Genre: F/M, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-31
Updated: 2014-07-31
Packaged: 2018-02-11 05:22:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2055204
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/transversely/pseuds/transversely
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“I don’t menace my best friends,” Kotaro said loftily, “that one time I did something that looked like but was not menacing to find that musically challenged cretin's house was in the proper, the proper interests of—well, anyway, Sena sent a group email, and you’re the only one who puts his real name in his email address instead of like, incomprehensible chord progressions, that’s a hypothetical example though, totally hypothetical."</p>
            </blockquote>





	it's like sportsmanlike conduct but for people with better hair

**Author's Note:**

> starry-eyed postcanon love letter to an absolutely glorious series i finished at Sena-level speeds this month and am still not over. with many thanks and rueful admonitions to Senri for pressing it upon me!
> 
> pairings lightly present but backgrounded and hence untagged include Takami/Sakuraba, Kotaro/Akaba, Maruko/Riku, Hiruma/Mamori, and Sena/Monta/Suzuna.
> 
> enjoy!

 

 

 

 

 

**10.**

 

 

 

 

When he told Musashi he was tops in the running for the position of Sasaki Kotaro’s new best friend, Musashi poured a bucket of gravel on his shoes, but Kotaro guessed that this was probably his way of expressing gratitude for the universe that had bestowed this honor upon him, so essentially an acceptance speech except with dirt. It was a little declassé—but this was why he needed a best friend like Sasaki Kotaro, who was kind of the Elvis of lower Shibuya except with virtuosic kicking acumen and more inspirational hair, qualities out of which he could probably distill enough blistering coolness to anoint Musashi by proxy.

“I think we would be like, so smart as best friends?” he explained, soulfully mashing his toe in the gravel to indicate the raging flood of smartness that was about to dash Musashi’s world to smithereens, in a pleasant way. “You know what I’m saying? So smart? I could do your hair. I love that like, bandana thing you’ve got going. I think that’s so vogue, man. The bandana thing is way ahead of the times, unlike _colored contacts,_ which—I mean, you agree those are so over, since we’re best friends—“

“How did you get my email,” said Musashi.

“Aw, I don’t think there’s any reason to whale on colored contacts, myself,” said Kid. “Not for little old me, but they’re kinda flattering on the right cheekbone structure.”

“ _Please_ , just because Aka—someone, like a random, some _random guy_ has incredibl…y okay cheekbones, it doesn’t mean he can pull off—“

“Are you trying to menace me into being your best friend,” said Musashi.

“I don’t _menace_ my best _friends_ ,” said Kotaro loftily, “that one time I did something that _looked like_ _but_ _was not_ menacing to find that musically challenged cretin’s house was in the proper, the proper _interests_ of—well anyway, Sena sent a _group email_ , and you’re the only one who puts his real name in his email address instead of like, incomprehensible chord progressions, that’s a hypothetical example though, totally hypothetical. That was smart! Or how else would I have found out you were still clinging to these like, childish dreams of being a construction worker instead of being practical and embracing your future as a millionaire pro football player, and also…not…hanging out with a bunch of random kickless clowns,” he waved his hand vaguely in the direction of the scattered Takekura players and Kid tipped his hat on his way over to a stack of unkickable-looking steel beams, though really, anything was kickable if your heart was pure and your hair was fabulous. “So our fated reunion is totally thanks to Sena. We should send him a telegram, which is like a card, except vintage. That’d be smart.”

He made a camera snapshot with his fingers to indicate the level of smart but Musashi had trundled off to do something useless and self-indulgent like lay a “concrete foundation” for a “struggling family of five”, and Kid was _enabling_ him. _Enabling_! They were blatantly ignoring Kotaro in favor of doing a firemen’s lift on a vat of churned concrete, setting their feet, shifting shoulders already dotted with sweat in the chilly, vegetal-scented spring air. It looked like a line move but it wasn’t, it was just another iteration of everyone having something new to do that looked like but was not what they should have been doing, the way hammering on the door of Akaba’s house the first time he’d left had looked like but was not menacing him. The back of Kotaro’s neck went prickly and tight.   

“You already quit once!” he snapped. “I don’t—the whole point was not to do all that again, right? Wouldn’t that be the smart thing?”

“The kick’s all on you,” said Musashi. “You know that better than anyone.”

“I’m not the only one who’s at Enma! Kurita’s—he’s there too, why aren’t you thinking about _that_? Or there’s Hiruma at Saikyoudai, though fuck Saikyoudai, and fuck lying traitors who think _this_ time they’re really gonna play on a top class team, and _fuck_ their—colored contact lenses—”

“Mushanokoji,” said Musashi, “you mind supervising the guys for a bit? I’m gonna walk my friend here to the gate.”

He did. At the gate, he lifted the latch for him to let him back into the street. There was a cross-hatching of contrails above them in the sky, a heady ogee curve of shattering blue but not enough for Kotaro; after you’d seen the sky between the goalposts, backdrop and subordinate to your ball cleaving it down the cloudless center, there wasn’t any other view of it that could impress you anymore.

“You don’t need to worry about anyone leaving now,” said Musashi, “you know that. Better than anyone.”

“Oh, go—build a house or something,” cried Kotaro, “be a—a _productive member of society_! See if I care!”

“Sasaki, I’m—glad you thought I could remind you.”

It was always your ball. No one could throw off your kick by interrupting you, or— _leaving_ on you, or something. No need for a full team, or half a team if that was all you had, or eventually just you and your benched best friend, even, the waiting eyes you’d met thousands of times over incredibly okay cheekbones now indecipherable as six months unraveled themselves at a glacial pace. It was true: the kick was the only play in football that was all on you.

On the way back he had to punt around a cardboard crate he’d found up the hill to his dormitory to work the jitter out of his nerves and that was when he saw Akaba leaning against a tree, not even a real tree but a hapless sapling that was bending like a bow under his weight, because Akaba was the kind of showboating idiot who had probably thought leaning against a tree—any tree—would bolster his ex-ex- _ex-_ best-friend cred when Kotaro came up the hill, so you couldn’t do anything but pity him, really, and make sure to save the tree. Kotaro gathered his bearings, lobbed off something casual and not too tryhard like, “Look who the cat punched in the face and manhandled down to inferior and unworthy schools to harass smart, loyal, above-averagely attractive football players” before panicking and going for his comb.

It was a mark of how enraging Akaba’s presence was that even his own scintillating wit wasn’t making him feel at ease. The evening was emptying, but there was still too much on the street. The absence of streetlights welling between them. A lingering chill of winter, dimming and igniting in firefly bursts in the cooling powdery dusk.

“How—how’d you know which dorm I was in anyway,” he said mullishly.

“Sena-kun sent a group email asking for addresses,” said Akaba, lifting his phone. “You’re the only one who replied all. Otherwise, I _am_ an artiste…I would have bartered one of these passerby a song of choice for information. I know three chords now, ergo—”

“Are you not smart? Everyone knows _reply all_ means _reply all the time_ , and that’s what I do, ‘cause Sena’s my extra-smart very-first-ever sort-of kohai, so I’m _always_ gonna be there for him, unlike—anyway, that’s not even the point, how do you have the _nerve_ to—I don’t talk to Saikyoudai students! I’m gonna call Unsui. I’m gonna sic _Mizumachi_ on you, that’s smart.”

“It sounds like your new teammates understand your musical sense.”

“Yeah, at least they’re not going to _go_ _anywhere_ , I—“ it felt like a retread of the argument they’d had last, though it was different now, defanged, because last time Akaba had come back. And for the first time since the scouts had come, the sight of the team on the ground unfolding for his kickoff  had felt more reassuring than the sight of his ball soaring alone between the goalposts.

The memory irritated him so he snapped his comb open and shut, fluffed up a section of hair that had been deflating, stabbed his toe into the dirt.

“We had a really smart two years,” he muttered. “I mean—it was two and it should have been three, but we had it. Congratulations, or whatever. Soon as they let you start, you’re gonna be the smartest kick returner Saikyoudai’s ever had.”

“Your kicks…sound better. Who knows if I’ll get to them before your teammates.”

“Please, when I’m a starter this year, I’m not gonna let you or anyone at Saikyoudai _touch_ my kicks—“

“I wouldn’t get any faster if you did.”

“If you don’t, I’ll kick them at your _head_ , I can bean you in the cranium _so_ easy now, since you’re not wearing the eyeshield—fucking red contacts stick out like a—“ His fingers were shaking. He dropped the comb on the sidewalk.

“You know what that sounds like?”

The waiting was gone from Akaba’s posture now—that was what was different. He leaned forward, filling the pocket of stillness between them with his dense, resonant presence. When he fit the comb back into Kotaro’s hands his fingers had a weight to them, gentle and decisive the way Musashi had lifted the latch. Letting Kotaro back out onto the road home.

“What, E flat minor, or some bull—“

“It sounds,” said Akaba, “like you’ll stay at Enma and I’ll stay at Saikyoudai, and we’re going to end up as the most melodic kick team. I came here to ask you if you were okay with that.”

It was dark in earnest now, but the streetlight hadn’t yet gone on. Kotaro waited for a moment, and another. Slowly a feeling spread under his breastbone, buoyant and expanding to fill the space, and he thought it was something like the plum-colored sky above, invisible but present, and so much of it—so much more of it!—than you could see between the goalposts, extending all the way to the nimbus of light that was the city seen from Enma campus. The same sky that came to bear down on Akaba’s shoulders now, the same it’d been all that wasted bench year when they were high school students, the year that made possible the two years, that should have been three, when there had been a strongest kick team.   

“Yeah,” said Kotaro. “I’m—I guess. I guess that’d sound smart.”

 

 

 

 

**9.**

 

 

 

 

“It’s you!” shrieked Ikkyu. “I knew it was you! I knew you weren’t a real fucking _doctor_! I knew you were a _secret weapon receiver_ in _disguise_ as a doctor but when I said so the receptionist tried to have me _sedated!_ What is _she_ , like a figure skater or something? _Is this even a hospital?_ “

“Um, well, technically, I can be a…secret weapon receiver _and_ a doctor, and it’s not doctor, it’s just medical student, but more to the point, um—please put down those syringes—“

Ikkyu looked at him as though he’d asked him to put down a minor organ instead of the most misused medical implement in history. Being openly suspected of malpractice wasn’t _new_ for interns, exactly, but the thought of explaining ‘football misunderstanding ended budding medical career, also life’ to his mother made Yukimitsu go slightly cross-eyed with horror.

He edged away, situating his clipboard in front of his chest. How were you supposed to block? Receivers didn’t have to block. Neither did medical students. Oh, god. He was going to be murdered. He was going to be murdered by a recalcitrant Naga monomaniac with a grudge.   

“I’m not holding syringes,” said Ikkyu disdainfully, brandishing the syringes. “Anyway, I came to see you because I discovered your secret identity, put that form away, do you think I have insurance, I’m a third year high school student. Deimon’s number sixteen. I remember exactly how I met you. You came out of nowhere like a searing hurricane, and then—“

“That definitely did _not_ happen, Hosokawa-kun, I barely got past you, I—I tripped over my own feet!”

“ _You came out of nowhere like a searing hurricane!”_ screamed Ikkyu. “Otherwise were Agon-senpai and I defeated by a FAKE DOCTOR who had never played football?!”

“Well—“ Yukimitsu considered this, decided the syringes seemed to have a mild sedative in them; it wouldn’t be an altogether terrible way to go. “Y-yes, that’s. Not altogether inaccurate.”

Ikkyu expelled air from between his teeth in a sort of soundless scream of rage and chucked the syringes into the sink. Divested of his weaponry he took to stomping around the break room with his hands shoved into his dogi, slinging glances at the medical equipment the way Yukimitsu had initially looked at things like mouthguards, attracted and repulsed by their no doubt sinister functions.

He circumnavigated the edge of a beaker with his pen to cover his consternation. Ikkyu threw himself into the chair across from him, snatched another pen, and began to bang with frenetic amiability on the other side of the beaker as if they’d agreed on this pursuit. While Yukimitsu was frantically trying to disappear every piece of glassware on the table simultaneously he muttered, “That’s why I came to find you, anyway.”

“ _What_?”

“Because you’re built like a stick of rubber with bangs, you look like you would pass out if the ball grazed your ear, you can’t run for more than like twenty seconds, and you tripped over your own feet.” This was delivered with such heartfelt affect it was impossible to be offended. “I mean—you must have a secret training method or something. If someone like _you_ got—somewhere like that with it, then someone like me could ace my tryout for Saikyoud—a good university. For football. You know. Because I failed the entrance exam, just so we’re clear, that’s because they kept asking about useless things like my future plans. Helloooo, is it not obvious I’m a football player?!”

He made the universally understood ‘come at me’ gesture at his spindly frame and nearly capsized all four feet ten inches of himself. Yukimitsu did something that was not gibbering.

“You’re—you’re _Hosokawa Ikkyu_ and you want _me_ to help you _train_ —“

“Because it’s about _improvement,_ and you obviously improved, because you sucked a _lot_ and now you just suck maybe like seven eighths of the time. I need to show them I can grow, not just—stagnate in amazingness. I’m probably some reincarnated superhero of receiving or something, but there are like _five billion_ receivers in Japan _alone_ who disgraced me during the last two years, and I just—I need to make sure. That I’ll be at the right level for university. You saw Kobayakawa’s email, didn’t you?”

“Well, Sena’s…never been very sure of himself…except, er, when something needs to be done? He’s …down to earth.”

Ikkyu gave him a dirty look, hissed, “The only way to get more down to earth than me is by going _underground_ ” and yanked his feet up onto the chair so his wooden shoes nearly took off a toe. The yearning sensation of the bench seized Yukimitsu suddenly, a splinter of sense memory. Something about the way Ikkyu’s body collapsed itself, the drawstring of his discontent pulling his limbs in under stiffly tented shoulders, all in all a jittery tangle of nonverbal desperation that made Yukimitsu want to do something suicidal like the first time he’d charged him in the first place, fit his hand to the misleading tender hollow of collarbone under the dogi, or ghost a thumb over a wire-boned knuckle.

Fortunately at this point of no return a passing second-year poked her head in, squeaked at Ikkyu’s irascible form, and showed herself out, calling that she didn’t know Yukimitsu-kun had a consultation and that was really great for an intern, do your best! and encouraging several of these tremulous self-destructive aspirations to quietly die. A consultation. Right. He massaged his temples and floundered for reassurances.

“I’m just—surprised, that’s all. I’m not even sure I’m going to make regular on Shuuei’s team—“

“You probably won’t in your first year, you still definitely _suck_ ,” Ikkyu reassured him. “But you will in your second year. That’s what I’m saying. You seriously win at sucking less over a fixed period of time.”

“My rate of…sucking less…is higher than yours. That’s what you think.”

“Yeah, _yeah_. First derivative and all that. Don’t look at me like that, I took calculus, I _look_ like a kindergartener, I’m not _actually_ one, _god_. You think Shinryuuji doesn’t teach math? Shinryuuji teaches so much math. You don’t even know how much math Shinryuuji teaches. I mean, you probably do, that’s why you’re a…med student,” he said it almost shyly. “It’s just…you’re the worst football player I’ve ever met, number sixteen.”

He was actually looking up at Yukimitsu through his eyelashes. He was positively crackling with earnesty. It was harrowing. It was like being hit on by an electrical leakage. Yukimitsu would have backpedaled right back to gibbering if his constitution hadn’t been strengthened by the likes of Hiruma stopping by the first years’ classroom casually to unload three hundred boxes of brand new chalk he’d “found in his locker under a gum wrapper” because Sena or Suzuna had maybe been seen handling one of the usual broken grimy ones in his presence once. This was to say nothing of the single question Yukimitsu had missed on his Shuuei entrance exam, a physics problem in which he’d overestimated how quickly a car could travel from Tokyo to Shirahama Beach, and which had culminated in a suspicious phone call from Hiruma at two in the morning (“YA-HA! I’ve coincidentally discovered it takes five hours with all four wheels on the ground for mostof that time, so why don’t you tell _that_ to the fucking examiners who marked it _seven_! YOU’RE A SPEED DEMON, FUCKING BALDY!”) to a disconcerting accompaniment of ocean waves crashing in the background. Really, Yukimitsu was an old hand at overinvested and physically improbable acts of kindness, it was probably time to pay it forward.

“I’m, uh—I’ll try my best to help you, but—my name isn’t number sixteen, you know, it’s, um, it’s Yukimitsu—you should definitely. Use it. If you want. We’ll make a plan for you, you’ll improve, and you’ll—I know you’ll definitely get into Saikyoudai.” 

“’course I will,” muttered Ikkyu. “I’m the best. That’s. That’s why I _solicited_ your _services_ , you know, Unlike you, I’ve never _needed_ to improve.”

“So you never did anything about it,” said Yukimitsu, and smiled, because they were both thinking of Shinryuuji.

He laughed, putting his face in his hands. For some reason the mirth kept coming, all of it buttery and saturated with the sunlight strewn over the glassware in the break room, the bright chime of steel-toes on tile outside in the hallway, Ikkyu’s feet battering around under the desk as he tried to kick him in the shin. He thought of Hiruma calling him that examination night with the sound of the sea in both their ears, the way he’d sounded on god knew what black market energy drinks, having burned five hours and change haring across prefecture lines to prove a point. _You might as well stay the night there_ , Yukimitsu had said, _really, it’s two in the morning_ and Hiruma had shrieked in his ear, laughing, the tide fireworking behind him so clearly Yukimitsu could picture it striking against the shore, _of course not, fucking baldy,_ punctuated by that frothy, unseen spray, the dark glass surge of unknown but not unconquerable water, _now that you’ve won,_ _nothing to do but beat that time back._

 

 

 

 

**8.**

 

 

 

 

“Oh, god,” said Takami, “this is _humiliating_. I’m—this isn’t what it looks like, I’m trying to get a picture for Sena-kun. Why don’t you go—buy a hot chocolate or something? You’re early—“

“If you want to take selfies with my billboards, I’m not going to stop you, but I might, um—charge royalties.” He had no idea what was coming out of his mouth. It was stupid, Sakuraba felt stupid. He put his hand on his neck and snatched it back. Takami had shoved his phone in his pocket and was doing and undoing his jacket zipper fretfully, a feat which at the moment seemed like an impossibly adept display of motor skills. “Takami-san, you could’ve waited five minutes for the real thing, you know.” What was he even _saying_?

“I just thought Sena-kun might, ah, recognize this one—it was taken when your collarbone was healing, so it’s probably a nostalgic…image for him…look, I’d—really like to assure you I’m not a stalker,” Takami attested, “as captain, I did take out a subscription to your fan club newsletter when you were a first year, but it was just because you were tall, not because you looked good or any—no, no, that is _not_ what I mean. Please don’t…oh, god. I should get back to Shuuei, I really should, I promised Yukimitsu-kun I’d throw passing practice for a friend he’s bringing, so—I. Sakuraba.” He did something hysterical with the zipper. “It’s not that I don’t find you physically attractive. I _really_ —I like your skin, I’ve always—liked your skin.“

“Thanks,” said Sakuraba miserably. “I think you have nice glutes. That’s—I’m saying your butt is nice, that’s what I’m saying.”

“Oh, that’s—thanks, thank you, that’s very kind of you.”

“I could lend you my deep exfoliator? If you wanted.”

“Really kind…”

He should have bought the hot chocolate so he could pour it over his own head and drown a pleasant artificially glucosed death. He pulled up the collar of his jacket, hatefully stewing in the pocket of warmth created, and felt snow on his eyelashes—it’d been spring weather all week but it’d regressed now; he hated it, he hated _everything_.

This particular billboard photo had been taken—Takami was right—just as his collarbone had mostly healed and just before he’d quit his job, so there was still unsightly swelling that had in the picture been covered by a huge, woolly scarf that’d had Sakuraba sneezing for weeks afterward. Early winter, the sky a bone-white belly stretched taught with its load of snow over the city, Tokyo teenagers packing into Akihabara and Shibuya for their imitation furs and Parisian leathers and Sakuraba was homespun superiority’s photoshopped emissary: dewy-skinned boy-next-door selling Hokkaido knits so heavy he still remembered how he’d struggled under the intense wovens, the coccoonery of the cashmere burying his catching humiliations under sales commissions and skyscraper-height extra glossies. In the shot selected for the advertisement he’d been zoned out on painkillers, shined up with Vaseline on his eyelids and teeth and the divot of his lower lip, fast in the grip of a soul-shattering self-pity that had been rather pathetic at the time, but translated photographically to a grand, devastating expanse of melancholy amplified out over the overpass and the cars that hurtled by underneath it.

All he remembered were the small inconveniences of scratchy wool and how dry his throat had been, but from here he could see his own anguish too. Distanced from him and blown up to that height the photo had its own physical presence and he could see he’d been a fool to think it was hidden that way, when it was clearer than ever. He felt the weight of it on the exposed skin of his wrists, his cheeks. Pocari or mineral water thudding with that same weight of finality at the vending machine in the hallway countless times as he escaped from Shin setting another record. He wished they’d arranged to meet at a coffee shop, or anywhere else. Anywhere new.

“I look so… _whiny_ ,” he said, laughing weakly. He wondered if Sena, Sena who was still looking for his answer to what he’d asked on the balcony, would buckle under it too if he saw the picture—the enormity of who they’d been then. “Takami-san was a saint to put up with me if I looked like— _that_ —in practices.”

 “What, like a very good professional model?” They ducked their heads, suddenly shy, and this—this was old too, someone mirroring your feelings so precisely across the field or across the cacophony of a locker room. As though you were meeting one another’s eyes above everyone else’s heads. “No, I—it was good you looked like that. You always did. Even when you threw up on my spikes at your tryout.”

“ _That_ —I’m—I’m really, uh, sorry about that. Two hours on the rowing machine beforehand was maybe—“

“It’s okay. Great icebreaker story for me at med school.”

“What?! That’s not fair!”

“I’m kidding. But it’s—don't give yourself trouble because you wanted something better and you…you still thought it was possible, after everyone who was satisfied had stopped thinking that. It wasn't wrong, it was just...childish. Like a second-stringer with a bad leg who still thinks he can be a quarterback, you know—just. Childish. I remember.” And Sakuraba remembered him too, just as well, though unlike Takami he hadn’t known the wait had ended, only that he was exhausted, sick with running, sick with wanting, and someone with hands as calloused as his had smoothed back his hair and said _well done_ in the same voice he’d say it after all those passes and again, breathless in the mountain air before that fall, _let’s show them together_. “But that was why I thought we’d be good partners. Not—not just because you were tall.”

He looked at Takami; he thought the self in the billboard, stretching meters above them with his eyes as big as Sakuraba’s entire head, was looking at him too, from the height of accumulated years. He thought for a moment, then took his gloves off, shoving them in his pockets. He dropped his bag and ran over to the billboard, hitching his sneaker up on the railing in front of it to lever himself up.

“Takami-san! Take a picture of me. For Sena!”

“What? With the billboard?”

“With the billboard. Like yours. And send it to him, say—say Sakuraba wants to know if he’s found his answer.”

As he clambered down to look at the picture on Takami’s phone the last snowfall of the year was coming down faster now in the bright, bitter air. Takami’s glasses were clouded with it and he’d gone glistening like Sakuraba in the picture, the snow melting on his temples and the grave, scholarly part in his hair. “Winter just won’t leave this year,” he said laughing, when he saw Sakuraba looking at the snowflakes, “spring, it’s—too late—“ and Sakuraba felt something inside him unknot, wanted to say with certainty that there was no such thing as being too late, but palmed the back of his head instead, and kissed him. His lips held the taste of snow, of waiting outdoors for a long time. The world spun, slivered to the gentle mouth under his, telescoped out again.

He hooked a hand wildly in Takami’s scarf. Felt dizzy, felt the heat sweetening them both. Back when he’d done his photoshoot for the knitwear company he’d wrenched off all the complimentary scarves when he got outside in a sudden fit of rage, releasing the anger that’d curdled against his skin all through the shoot, and when the cold had finally reached the bump on his collarbone he’d gasped out loud at how good it’d felt. It’d been so counterintuitive, he remembered thinking then, astonished, that what he’d been keeping out of sight had been, at that moment, the surest sign that he was alive.

 

 

 

 

**7.**

 

 

 

 

Maruko had begun managing for the precise reason that she despised football, despised the loose teeth spat out into the nurse’s basin from first-years whose bravado outstripped their understanding of mouthguard usage, and most of all despised that when she walked through the bleachers to keep her shoes clean in spring rain, she would see the handkerchief of the wrung and tear-washed field at a glance, and know she could rearrange it like folded paper into the shape of something she despised slightly less.

She’d been fifteen then, a first year. That season the rain had left wending trails of mud all the way into the locker room. Second year, and she’d sent an army of first-stringers sleeting across the tile with mops.

She’d cultivated her own taxonomy for Types and Kaitani Riku, she decided, fit just above the tier that would have bullied others into picking up a rag and bucket and just below the tier that would have done it without being asked. She’d recognized him at once across the Sakuraba Sporting Goods and continued picking through a selection of sports bras as he skulked from rack to rack in the local university merchandise section, not noticing her. Whatever he was doing looked extraordinary and illegal. He stalked up to the counter, drew a credit card like an assassin’s beretta, decided against this, and paid with an even more suspect assortment of coins and small bills.

She eyed this display of neurotic secrecy in silence. She flexed a finger against the garment she was holding, testing for breathability. When he finally made to sprint out of the door she took a few strides and held it open for him.

“ _You_ ,” he said, “you’re—I’m—maybe you know the rodeo drive…“

They engaged in the usual testosterone-induced ritual of sizing each other up and down, meeting each other’s staring refusal to offer a bow or handshake with enough force to constitute one in absentia, and deciding it would do.

“Seibu’s rookie ace,” she said; this was by this point untrue but she was principly opposed to the term ‘rodeo drive.’ “I remember. How is your old quarterback doing?”

“That injury was—“ he calculated, “almost two years ago. I had just mastered my fourth iteration of the rodeo drive, maybe you know it better as the roping rodeo drive, they’re easily confused, my parrot still can’t _—_ anyway. Shouldn’t you have asked then if you were concerned?”

She remembered the denim jacket. It was the same one, and the jerky, affronted way he carried it was the same as well. As she had then she wanted to turn down the collar, only because it was turned up and actually ironed in place like some sartorial ode to overcompensation and there was something sweet about the idea that he’d spent time doing it: a battering ram bringing its frame and momentum to punching a hole in the corner of a homework assignment.

“Suit yourself.”

“He’s the greatest sharpshooter on the railroad. He’s not at university yet, he’s working for one of the Deimon guys. His throwing arm is the fastest in the West, if that’s what you’re wondering. It’s not that easy to kill a bull-wrangler, you know.”

She stared at him until she realized he was being serious. This was why she despised football. “I’d have been happy to assist you with pressing charges otherwise.”

“Still not doing your team any favors, huh?”

“As Reiji made perfectly clear, it doesn’t particularly matter whether I do Hakushuu any favors or not, the team functions as it will.” It was just shy of the wrong thing to say and she realized it as she said it. “Not that I’m affiliated with Hakushuu anymore. I don’t have anything to do with high school football.”

He looked skeptical and it made her tired; a good manager was trained to think in potentials and contrasts and the preemptive bluster only reminded her of the way he’d gone blank when he’d seen the blood at the edge of Kid’s mouth, suddenly very childish, the kind of first year she’d been watchful of on her own team but transposed startlingly onto a third year’s face. There had been so many of them—hundreds. Had she really lost track of them all?

A heavy feeling churned in the pit of her stomach. There had been a fundamental misconception in the way she’d looked at the field from the bleachers as a first year, seeing something that could have been worth what was poured into it, and in the two years since, she’d thought that clean glass pane in her mind must have been the weak foundation on which Hakushuu had been built, that had ultimately cracked so easily ( _if you look at anything that’s not the ball,_ he’d said, scalpeling his finger up her shoulderblade, so she’d expected to hear herself keen like alarmed glass, _you lose already, I’d say_ ).

“Enough about me,” she said, “what were you buying? I was there for underwear.”

He didn’t blush or stutter or otherwise act inane, but he narrowed his eyes as though this was some complex power game, which might have actually been worse. It warmed her to him. He opened the bag and let her look at the orange university sweatshirt.

“Congratulations. I’ve heard Kobayakawa Sena plans to attend there as well.”

“You heard right.”

“Is your decision related?” At his sideways glance she shrugged, realizing the decision hadn’t been clear until he’d said it to her. “I’ve been handling less intelligent players than you without kid gloves for years, Kaitani, better you don’t ask me to do it for you. I don’t have anything to do with high school football anymore.”

“Well, I taught Sena, and I expect more of the rodeo drive. Myself, too, but mostly the rodeo drive. You know, Himuro, retired or not—I didn’t understand, then, but you expected more of Hakushuu, didn’t you.”

The wind whipped around them, plastering his jacket against his body; she wrapped her scarf more tightly and watched the secondhand light of the street narrowing and dimming to filaments in his eyes. Pompous, impractical, fundamentally misunderstanding the nature of football. She knew the type. One spring morning, first-year Himuro Maruko had been walking through the bleachers of the football field to keep her shoes clean, and she’d looked down, serene with the knowledge of her own oncoming competence, and seen a glorious, impractical future.

“I look forward to seeing what you’ll do,” she said, and meant it. “And your…rodeo creation.”

He scowled. At the opening to the metro stairs he turned, once again so studiously cool-looking he only succeeded in seeming completely overinvested and preposterous, and called, “You know, if you’re retired—I should ask you to return my handkerchief.”

“Is that so.”

“Yeah.”

She set her hands in her jacket pockets and leaned back on her flat-heeled shoes. Potentials and contrasts, and from where she stood she could see him at university, racing Kobayakawa Sena in the purple dusk, glowing like a tacky beacon in the orange shirt. He’d be very recognizable. She had an eye for the easily recognizable. Again she was at the top of the stairs looking down, but now she could see herself too, and know she hadn’t been wrong—she hadn’t been the weak foundation. Hadn’t this been what she wanted them to learn? How devastating injury was, how hard it was to recover, but she had never taught them to yearn for that field but also for this street, the streaming grey light of another day. The morning sky after the daily victory of moving on.

“I don’t have anything to do with high school football anymore,” she said. “When university ID cards go out…maybe you should ask again.”

 

 

 

 

**6.**

 

 

 

 

The Presentmobile was awesome. For reasons of artifact safety and mild lawbreaking it could drive no faster than eighteen miles an hour in no more than three states, but this aside it was probably the sweetest modification the Aliens had ever made to Panther’s new coupe, give or take the time they’d paper-machéd it into a _basically_ accurate space shuttle because everyone knew space shuttles didn’t have to pay entrance fees at Disneyland. The Presentmobile achieved maximum sweetness because it was host to the hands-down winner of a contest Panther had dubbed Sena Has Been Here for Eight Months and All We’ve Given Him is Vows of Friendly Competition and A Hawaiian Shirt (it didn’t acronym well, but he had his guys on it): a gigantic lacquered gargoyle that had been airlifted from the dumpster of a Michigan mall in the dead of night and replaced with a porcelain gnome in the likeness of Watt. Panther had seen it on tour. The resemblance was grotesque. It was outrageous. It had a convincingly sculpted orifice of brimstone into which it was possible to insert a tape recorder that screeched YA-HA at periodic intervals (a few shots of tequila and you’d _swear_ Homer was some relation, scout’s honor). Sena would probably expire of homesick joy when he saw it, and when he got back to Japan he could use it as an alarm clock, or even a badass dorm ornament!

He was probably going to cry. Panther could have high fived himself, or the gargoyle. 

At about one sixty miles outside South Bend, he saw a hitchhiker twirling hypnotically by the side of the road and cruised by to take a closer look when he saw the red shirt. “Hey! You’re—funny story, that shirt’s—I know these guys—“

“This?” The hitchhiker arabesqued into the air to model it. “AHAHA! My good man, this is my high school football teamshirt! I am journeying to so-called ‘Indiana’ to visit my dear comrade, who is suffering from homesickness! Perhaps you’ve heard of—“

“Eyeshield twenty-one!” they cried together. Panther kicked the door open around “Hiruma’s” hellfire-toting granite hands. “Get in here, Deimon guy!”

“Of course, Sena and I found it difficult to meet up previously because of my complex touring schedule,” Taki explained eventually, having unfazedly greeted “my upstanding Hiruma-senpai” upon being forced to share seat space with the fifteen-foot gargoyle looming out of the sunroof, so Panther’s present was already a resounding success. “I’m working as an extra in Hollywood films, that’s how my English has gotten so good. My bone structure is well suited to various classic American roles, like Holly Golightly or a majestic bald eagle. But you know, I saw from Sena’s note that he was homesick, so I thought I’d surprise him and escort him to the airport next week! A subtle yet memorable farewell—I was thinking just as the plane takes off, he could charge onto it while I intone, ‘AND SO AMERICA LOSES THE LEGENDARY EYESHIELD TWENTY-ONE.’ With no offense to present company, of course, you’re a—a _pro_.”

Panther was still driving at eighteen, inching merrily along the shoulder; the usual chorus of blaring horns had started up but the three policemen before had let him off after listening to his tale of friendship, which he reasoned was probably the guardian angel effect of “Hiruma.” He’d only had one conversation with the real thing, but they’d killed it at the World Cup afterparty, and Sena obviously liked the guy, so he was probably a sweetheart. Demure businessman type captain ( _salaryman_ , Watt had explained authoritatively, pushing up his glasses, _a sad adulterous one like in_  Ikiru, so _this explains why Sena looks faint when he talks about him, Sena’s fallen in love with his mistress_ ). He must have been the fifth or sixth Japanese team member who’d shaken his hand at the afterparty; Hiruma had called him ‘fucking zero-g,’ Panther asked him if his teeth were real, Sena gurgled in terror (?) and rocketed off to get thrown in the pool, and then they all went back in to do the electric slide. Totally down-to-earth guy.

“Nice!” he said. “We can’t have Sena being homesick. I’ve been wanting to see him before he went back anyway, Sena is my _man_. You know he just charged off a balcony once because he was talking to himself? I love that little dude.”

“To think! If Sena hadn’t been exiled to the United States after a battle with some dastardly American team, I’d never have been on a football—“

“No way, Sena met you on _that_ trip—! That’s us! That was us, I was on the Aliens!”

“Then—I owe my football career to you! It’s FATE!” shouted Taki, and burst into tears. Panther had to pull over so they could cry, hug the Hiruma gargoyle, and guzzle some of the emergency milkshakes in a cooler in the back which were there for emotionally harrowing occurrences. It was only later, drowsing in the backseat and drooling on “Hiruma’s” shoulder while Taki drove badly and definitely not at eighteen, that Panther fought off the lulling miasma of sleep and said, “He’s gonna come back, right? To try out again.”

“Absolutely.”

“Good,” said Panther, “totally promised—” and then he was out, vision teetering briefly on the edge of the bright green-lashed highway before going under. He’d wanted to ask Hiruma, the real one, at the World Cup two years ago, but it’d been late enough that some guy called We’ve Been Trying to Get Him Out For Hours, He Won’t Move, I Swear, And We Think His Dreads Are Sentient was already passed out in the hotel fountain and the Japanese team’s tiny receiver had been persuaded to sing a caterwauling duet with their even tinier cheerleader that had driven half of the players out into the tiled courtyard, under a silver-dollar moon that spangled the pool with glitter. Panther had needed air, too many congratulations and nowhere to put his trophy down so it wouldn’t break before it got to his grandmother’s.

He and Sena had been eyeing up the guardrail that separated the pillars near the pool from the dark trees below, wondering whether they’d be able to get a running start up onto it before gravity had its wicked way, when Hiruma had called out to him from the shade of one of the pillars. Rictus grin, long fingers curled around his wrung-out bad arm, and to Panther, who loved the sensation of exhaustion now, loved its testament that you’d been playing an entire match, his visible weariness had a comfort to it.

“Congratulations,” said Hiruma, after he’d confirmed the authenticity of his dentures and Sena had skedaddled off to be ambushed by linebacker pool-throwers, “you’re gonna be a fuckin’ pro, that’s what everyone came here for, you should donate to my various nonprofit endeavors when you get your first NFL paycheck—” he brandished some kind of spreadsheet at Panther from which the phrases “boxes of chalk (300)” and “replacement ultra-glide rollerblade wheels (6)” leapt out tantalizingly before being whisked back into Hiruma’s suit jacket.

“Fixer-upper type, that’s cool.” Something in the other guy’s expression had snagged on him like a hook. “Hey, man, no hard feelings—I’m sure you’ll make it too.”

“You must be blind, fuckin’ zero-g. My chances are about zero point zero percent.”

It hadn’t been modesty, hadn’t even been offered looking at him, so Panther just shrugged amiably and looked back out at Sena idling in the pool, floating thoughtfully on his back in his dress shoes and someone’s oversize jacket.

The manic light in Hiruma’s eyes on the field had been dampened down, was only another reflection of the artificial sconces on the walls, and to Panther’s surprise he was looking at Sena too, mouth thinned to a line of absent watchfulness. Like Taki he couldn’t help but think words like ‘fate’ at that moment, the invisible ley lines of force that connected players who didn’t know one another or didn’t know one another yet, that pulled them together or apart but always forward.

The water lapping at Sena’s cheeks seemed to sweep over him as an ocean then, chill and complete, and full with the promise of its attendant shoreline. It was everyone in the room’s dream and he’d done it, made it to the finish line that little bit faster and put his feet down into the glittering sand there first. 

I’m gonna make sure I deserve it, he wanted to tell them both. He thought Sena would have understood, had thought so since he first saw him polishing his eyeshield in small finicky crescents, but he didn’t know enough Japanese to do it properly then, so he’d only shoved a hand in his pocket and kicked at the tiles, considering the light from the green water beating gently on Hiruma’s pensive face, and something about that adult watchfulness made him sink comfortably into the celebratory air of the evening again, snap Hiruma a roguish grin.

“Badass, though,” he said impulsively, “more for fixer-upper types to do outside the pros, you know what I’m saying?”

Hiruma stared at him. The green reflections made him look absolutely devilish, but there was still that dampened-down light, the taut tension of his features as the night wound down. The first time Panther had spoken to Sena, in that temple in their first year, he hadn’t said the wrong thing then either. Then Hiruma’s mouth flashed wide to expose that row of improbably, delightfully pointed (real! unthinkably _real!_ ) teeth.

“Ya-ha!” he said, and burst out laughing. In the pool Sena closed his eyes, smiled.

 

 

 

 

**5.**

 

 

 

 

Kazuki, in a startling departure from the usual, was having a good night. He’d fallen asleep in the back of Toganou’s truck and didn’t want to wake up from his dream, which was very pleasant and involved oscillating slowly above a sparkling city of lights, while a hook inserted lovingly into the back of his shirt lowered him down past a no trespassing—

He didn’t even start yelling until he opened his eyes.

“DOWN! NOW! HIRUMA-SENPAI! HIRUMA-SENPAI—“

“Juumonji, shut the hell up!”

“SENPAI!“

“Does he think _Hiruma_ is doing this?”

“No idea, but I did not fucking come out here to help out a bro so _Hiruma-senpai_ could get credit for my—“

“Hiruma…”

“Komosubi-kun is right, he’s not accusing Hiruma, he’s calling for Hiruma’s help! Isn’t that sweet? We should call Hiruma, he’ll be so touched!”

The prospect alone was so wretched Kazuki stopped panicking and reasoned dangling in the air by a hook above some unknown university quad wasn’t a bad way to continue leading a Hiruma-less existence in peace. He recognized these voices, stewed testily, refused to utter another word until Kuroki and Toganou decided between themselves that he was almost certainly dead and they should “turn the crane around so we can give him like an honorable funeral and shit,” upon which he was swung alarmingly to the left like the worst amusement park yo-yo ride in known history. He listed for a bit while they bickered and were shushed by Kurita, then was whirled in some kind of satanic summoning circle while the lights of the campus streaked around his temples.

“I’m not dead,” he enunciated blearily, “and if you don’t let me down, I’m probably going to throw up on you.”

“Let him down,” hissed Kuroki, “this is _not_ my jacket. My mom is really attached to—“

Dithering ensued over which way was down while he dangled in midair like a profanity-spewing windchime. The Takekura Enterprises logo gleamed apologetically at him from the metal midrail of the crane; he’d kind of idolized Musashi for the last two years but now he was _definitely_ whiting out that part of his self-preservation guide for Devil Bats’ posterity because it looked like those years had been a lie and Musashi was actually an enabling sadist.

“Relax, Juumonji,” called Toganou, “we’ve been working for Musashi-senpai for like, six whole days, so we totally know how this— _ow,_ fuck! If that lever pokes me in the ass again it’s going the way of its smug little twin—“

“Plan!”

“Yes, yes, we should go through with the entire plan, since we got him this far! Juumonji-kun, we’re going to drop you in a bush now, so please be careful with your excess limbs—“

He got a mouthful of bush. Their aim wasn’t bad, but literally everything else that was happening was so they didn’t get much of a pass. He rolled onto the cobblestones and dashed over to the fence separating them from the university, through which he could see them now, crammed into the crane’s driver’s compartment while Kurita and Komosubi watched fretfully from the grass.

“What the _hell_ are you _doing_ —“

“Didn’t you get Sena’s email? Saikyoudai’s results go up earlier than Enma’s!”

“Obviously I got the email, but what the _fuck_ does that have to do with—oh. Oh. Are we—“

“That’s the registration building!” Kurita pointed through the fence, a little way down the path through the bushes where Kazuki could see a gate bordered by maples. A long wooden board had been set up. Lines of names and numbers visible, even through the darkness. “We thought—maybe you’d like to know early. We surprised you! Hiruma hated being in the crowd of people, you know, Mamori-san had to tell him and even then he had a hard time with—Musashi and me, you know, I really…didn’t believe it until that second, that he was l…leaving. And that was hard on Hiruma, I…I think.” An easy smile, delivered with a shudder through that huge body; Kurita didn’t hide anything because it wasn’t a luxury he had. “And you remember what Suzuna-chan used to say, if you cry now, then tomorrow, when everyone else finds out—you can laugh.”

“But I’m not gonna—get all emotional—“

“Just go,” interrupted Kuroki. “Go check your results. We’re just gonna. Hang out here in the crane.”

“Gonna hang out here,” grunted Toganou.

There was silence. The links of the fence bit cold and bright into Kazuki’s fingers. It was windy here, further out from the city, but it was quiet. He was only a few feet from the results; he could have jogged the distance and made the acquaintance of himself as a university student. A better football team, a proper academic ranking, the absolute uncontestable knowledge that no one could doubt your right to be anywhere, with anyone, ever again. 

It was a short distance, but he was still standing there holding onto the fence. The sudden stillness had welled up too quickly and surprised him: that must have been it.

“Guys,” he tried.

It was a wash. He kicked the base of the fence, swore, kicked it again for good measure and then tucked his sneaker behind his ankle with the little hurt beating under the canvas, out of sight, insistent. “It’s not—I _want_ to go to Saikyoudai. First choice. No one’s forcing me.”

“Obviously, you dick, so tomorrow when you find out for _real_ , and get to tell Hiruma-senpai, and stuff—you can act cool about it.”

“Because you suck at acting cool.”

“ _Suck!”_

“Though you always got a lot more confession letters than us.”

“A shit ton—“

“Because you’re—cool. You’re really cool, Juumonji.”

“Really _fucking_ cool.”

“C—Coolest.”

Kuroki was snuffling angrily into the palm of his hand. Toganou’s glasses had fallen off. They were shitty glasses; they were too big, but those were the frames he’d wanted, and it wasn’t like they exactly had _money_ to get them resized or whatever, but now they’d have to, because he couldn’t be working on a construction site with shitty falling-off glasses, not that Kazuki would know if he did, because he wouldn’t be there.

It hit him then: what he’d been waiting for. Socked the wind out of him like he’d been getting socked all through high school, pummeled him to a soreness that keened under the skin so he didn’t feel like he could have stood if he weren’t holding on to that fence, watching his best friends waiting for him to do something. No more time now. If he wanted to do anything—hang his #51 up one more time on the old locker, throw grapes at the neon-lit Football Club sign in the dark, steal pages of Toganou’s drawing notebook to turn in as his own in art class—take a broom from Mamori to help clean up, boost Komosubi over the benches to see the class campfire, clean artillery shells out of the storage room, buy sugarfree gum out of habit, do something, he’d _never_ figured out what, for Kurita’s birthday, apologize to Sena, help Kuroki and Toganou kick the baseball bat under the waste collection bin and forget to pick it up, watch his father invite them in again for the first time—the time to do it was gone. The line had held, and Sena had run through, ahead into the future. High school football was over.

“Go on and look,” said Kurita softly. “Tomorrow we’ll be strong for everyone else. You three have all gotten so good at it.”

“Linemen,” said Komosubi.

Kazuki wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. He kicked once more at the fence for good measure, and then he pointed his shoes towards the name list down the path. It took him a moment to parse the dense columns of print, and then he saw it: the number fifty-one, standing on its own.

 

 

 

 

**4.**

 

 

 

 

“If you liked this tour, remember to give a shout-out to Mizumachi Kengo, your super fun guide to all the super fun things to do and super cool football equipment you get to use and super nice empty classrooms no one actually works in at your future home, Enma University! And of course—“ 

“Do I have to say it—“

“ _Yes_ , you have to say it—“

“…ugh, Kongo Unsui, your less fun guide to all the less fun administrative things you have to do before you decide whether you want to come to your future home, Enma University, mostly have your medical records checked by a reputable source—“

“I’m totally a lifeguard,” offered Mizumachi.

“—and don’t worry about concussion testing, that was part of the regular entrance test, so if you passed, you’ll know, and if you didn’t, let us know and we’ll put you in contact with our… external verifier.”

“That’s Kakei,” said Mizumachi. “He’s totally a lifeguard.”

“Thank you for your attention.” They bowed, held it staunchly for a few seconds, and straightened up looking relieved. Unsui caught Suzuna’s eye and actually made a concerted effort to look less grim and fatalistic, which she thought was a beautiful personal touch and made her want to rub his head, even though she was trying out the adult university coed thing and was in theory above head-rubbing. She lobbed him a demure smile instead; she’d totally seen Mamori do it to Hiruma once, before telling him all she had was sugary gum and she’d accidentally mistaken the sugarless for a pile of erasers and donated it to the art club.

“What did you think?” cried Mizumachi, slinging his arm around her. “Is Sena gonna love it or is Sena gonna love it? Kurita should’ve been here too, obviously, but he’s sleeping in, he was out late last night? I’m gonna dispatch someone to jump on him—”

“Sena’s going to be so excited! That water gun attack, he’ll feel right at home! Oh, I hope we got in, though the Saikyoudai results come out today too, and –we do have to go see them, we’re touring _everywhere_ today…”

“We got in _max_ ,” assured Monta, “remember that time Hiruma-senpai helped us study over Skype and it just went dead all of a sudden and then Taka told me he’d kicked his computer over because he was so max proud of your mad trigonometry skills?”

“We’ll definitely see you tomorrow, then,” said Unsui. “When Sena’s flight gets in. We’re looking forward to hearing your results, so—“

“THE TOUR’S OVER, MY FAVORITE SAD OLDER BRO, STOP BEING FORMAL!” shrieked Mizumachi, and jumped on Unsui’s back, looping his arms around his chest as he scrabbled for piggyback leverage on someone who was half a foot shorter than him. To Suzuna and Monta, he added, “You kohai guys had better just indulge him, because our mission for this year is to make him realize he’s cute and doesn’t need dreads,” as if Unsui wasn’t _right there_.

“And our mission for Mizumachi is to get him senpai-ready,” droned Unsui, “I hope you two decide on us. He and Kotaro are so excited about having actual kohais they’ve created a list. Things like ‘buy two-person popsicles and gallantly break off half for kohai’—“

“DON’T TELL THEM THAT, I’LL PULL YOUR HAIR,” screamed Mizumachi, and loped off tearing off his shirt as he went, despite the blistering not-quite-spring weather. They watched him go, Monta muttering something about hypothermia max. Unsui was one of those people for whom too-fond looks came easily, the natural state of his face, as though he couldn’t quite help being astounded at others’ unabashed indulgence in their right to inhabit the world. There was something sad and familiar about it and Suzuna tried to remember where she’d seen it; then she remembered: the Teikoku quarterback, setting up for a pass.

Matchmaking project! Her first at university! She throttled Monta’s arm delightedly at the thought; he disengaged and ambled after Mizumachi. “I’d love to be his kohai! He always danced with the cheer squad at Kyoshin…”

“He’s fixated because his quarterback—Kobanzame, I think—graduated in your first year, and it made an impression on him. So…it seems he’d like to be the same kind of senpai for someone.”

“It was pretty hard on us when ours retired too.” She didn’t tell him that spring there had been hail on the copper roof of the clubhouse one day and Sena had stopped talking midsentence and shot out into the whitened field banging the door behind him because it’d sounded like cheery blanks firing, or that one morning he’d woken up from a fitful nap between classes and looked straight at her, a chill, adamantine clarity, and said, “This is how they felt when he left” before his head dipped forward and he was asleep again.

Good wishes were standard. A cheerleader knew that better than anyone; you sighted the people you wanted to win on the field and distilled those wishes from your own body of knowledge, memories as you’d watched them train or grow or crash into you as you took a railing on your rollerblades, but in bad cheering all of that came out as only the most banal platitudes. You spent so much time preparing, and then when you opened your mouth all you had to express your hopes were the same cut-rate phrases everyone else had. She’d wanted to tell Sena, when he’d left for the States: she’d been cheering for so long now, but she hadn’t found a way to express what she wanted either.

On the bus to Saikyoudai, she hung over the back of her seat and dangled her purse in Monta’s face until he stopped trying to destroy Ikkyu in a game on his phone and listened to her. She’d been telling him forever that playing games which required fine motor coordination on the bus was a bad idea because someone or the other would jostle him and then Monta would yell that it hadn’t been a fair fight and then Ikkyu or Taka would cast aspersions because both of them believed public transportation was some sort of hoax and refused to patronize municipality buses and then Monta would declare war and Ikkyu’s ex-Shinryuuji cronies would kill him in an icy motorcycle duel on the Odaiba waterfront and all of Deimon’s honorably won funds during the past three years would be squandered on a lavish state funeral, but he kept ignoring this. Now, though, he only shoved the phone in his bag, a thoughtful expression percolating on his face. 

“Ikkyu got into Saikyoudai on scholarship too,” he said. “It’s pretty exciting.”

“Well, I know there’s another left, I asked You-nii if—hey! Hey—what do you mean, _too_? Why didn’t you _tell_ me!”

She unbuckled her seatbelt and leaned so far over the back of the seat that when the bus stopped she went careening over the top into his lap. They shoved at each other petulantly for a few moments, yelling, and by the time another two blocks had wound past had bitterly hashed out an equilibrium, slung up against each other in the single seat, the heat of his awful bony shoulder familiar enough that eventually she stopped punching his forearm and sunk down, burrowing her head methodically into his side until he put his arm halfheartedly around her.

“Nothing to tell,” he said. “But—I don’t know. I spent the whole last year wanting to play with them again, and now that I can, it’s…I don’t know. Saikyoudai’s a perfect team, max. They even have—” he pulled the folded brochure from his pocket— “a skate park, a real one.”

“Just because Musashi-senpai made mine out of ice doesn’t mean it wasn’t _real!_ Until it melted…but then Mamo-nee had a bunch of old orange crates You-nii shot up…”

“—and they tried to act like they totally meant to do that so they could make you something out of nothing? Yeah…and when they busted that up, Kurita-senpai ate like ten more crates of oranges so you wouldn’t notice—“

“—and they spent the entire night trying to redo it until Mamo-nee used the flamethrower on it by accident…and You-nii said she never learns and she torched all his sugarfree gum and then Yuki-senpai bought me a season pass to the downtown municipal park.”

They’d become animated enough that they’d nearly tumbled out of the seat and now they grabbed at each other to stay steady, morose again. The landscape outside had gotten green and coloring-booky and rilled with tasteful flowerbeds: Saikyoudai territory. Outside it was a madhouse, traffic jam all the way up the highway, all kids coming in from around the country to see their scores, and probably if you wanted to you could circumvent that by dashing across the tops of the station wagons at ungodly speeds and cradling your backpack in your arms while crying ‘h-hieeee’ and gradually settling into that beatific private expression you got when you hit the lunatic, thrilling high of the entire thing, and really, Suzuna would totally have gotten over these random stabs of Sena’s absence by now if they didn’t keep _asserting_ themselves by making it clear how much Sena’s wet blanket presence improbably improved basically any situation.

“You remember Mizumachi-senpai crying when we won against them? When their quarterback was done.”

“Yeah. Yeah. But he looks happy now.”

“Yeah.”

“Gonna do a great job max.”

The bus had stopped. People were pushing past them out into the lawn, stepping over their bags. Someone bumped her shoulder and apologized. They’d fallen out into the aisle and stayed there kneeling, staring stricken at one another as the bus emptied.

“You think Sena got a scholarship too?” she asked in a small voice.

“You didn’t read his email?”

“No. I didn’t want to do it by myself…”

“Neither did I. I didn’t want to know what he decided yet.”

“He wouldn’t decide without hearing what we think.”

“So—so what do we think, Suzuna?”

“I—“

That day when Sena had fallen asleep in class she hadn’t said anything when he woke up, only let him ride out the finishing note of his feelings in silence, and she’d been alone with her thoughts too, but aware dimly that it was the first time they’d both been at opposite ends of a shared context. Her mind felt full. She’d wanted to go out on the orange-crate skating apparatus again, though it’d been demolished and had never actually been safe, but there’d been something thrilling anyway to its ricketiness, the fact that it could have fallen to bits at any second or that she could envision, with perfect ease, the arguments Hiruma and Mamori would have had over whether the few square feet under it should be used for a safety net or a “motivational” lava pit. She thought about Kongo Unsui’s face, the easy acceptance there. The irrational belief an echo of what she’d felt then: there was no way she was going to fall.

“We should send him a message,” she said, “and then we can see what he said. Okay?”

The floor of the bus was getting cold but they stayed until they’d done it. When she’d typed in her choice they traded phones silently, glanced at each other, got up.

The sun was already high in the sky, the day unweaving too-bright and windy over the greenery, and they stopped in the doorway of the bus to let themselves take in the last few moments of pleasant darkness. Suzuna lounged with her elbows on the railing of the steps. A white froth of cumulus had splashed up in the sky, girdling the sun. Saikyoudai’s buildings slid into soft violet relief, the fluid cracked-egg expanse of the spreading day something Sena must have been seeing too, far away getting ready to make his homeward trek, but somehow the knowledge of its commonness didn’t make it any less lovely to her, at that moment.

She was thinking of orange crates, two-person popsicles split down the center, the speed of time flying and of making something out of nothing. The sense memory of the shaking highway under her rollerblades on the deathmarch, and far ahead of her, beyond the truck, she had been able to see the rock kicked off Sena’s feet before he got control of it, and they both vanished into the glare of the sun.

The memory of it played a glowing warmth on her face now, bringing a blush; she could have laughed out loud, or wept at the feeling, unbelievable, unmistakable: it was beginning to feel like spring.

"He sent a picture," she said. "Look--he said he wanted to do this before he left, remember? Clearing up another lie for someone else."

“So let's read the rest of it together," said Monta. “On three: one, two—“

 

 

 

 

**3.**

 

 

 

 

While Yamato set the picture to downloading he challenged himself to do a variety of mundane tasks from his daily routine at high speed. He made his bed, and Taka’s too, careening from one to the other before the pillow had finished bouncing. He took their trash out to the hallway and scooped up Agon’s medley of beer bottles for recycling at the same time. He flashed a dazzling smile at the inhabitants of 142B and zippily helped a second-year with a math problem while swanning by to provide grandparents crossing the quad with friendly directions. He lifted a box for someone struggling in the kitchen. He straightened one of the posters in the first floor lounge that exhorted students to add something other than ramen to their diets and shook his head sadly that it probably wouldn’t be done, but he and Anezaki Mamori had been discussing offering cooking lessons, so it was only a matter of time. He fixed his hair in a window and clocked the whiteness grade of his rigorously maintained teeth.

When he got back to his room the picture was still going, so he hitched himself up onto the windowframe and let his forearms under rolled-up sleeves siphon the cool from the rust-flecked glass. The windows of the dormitory were tall and the light filtered through the glass hadn’t lost its gemstone laziness, a spring shade he still associated with the green recycled bottles of beer students used to hoard and resell at Notre Dame games.

He thought he could stay there for a while and fall asleep. He felt himself going golden on the clean honey-colored floorboards, the motes of hanging light that caught the sun as students streamed into the university campus. He could see all of it but felt far from it, held away from the urgency of immediate improvement by that lulling penumbra of light. In all his years charging ahead, taking who he could with him by persuasion or by force, it felt new.

“Well, Sena!” he said aloud. “I’m glad we’re still learning.”

As if in answer the phone pinged. He reached for it and flicked the picture open. In the frame he saw rows of golden plaques, the parting words of wisdom from exchange students from around the world in the circular room he remembered and there was Sena’s own, screwed into the brick the way his had been before it was removed. He felt a twist in the bottom of his stomach at the memory and then he zoomed closer to read what he’d written, and his mind went clean and light.

 

TAKERU “EYESHIELD 21” YAMATO

Visiting running back, 2004-2005

“It’s settled—it’s my win!” 

 

 

 

 

**2.**

 

 

 

 

 

“Did you hide my notebook?”

Hiruma was doing something horrible-looking with a pair of pliers, a stuffed shark, and a cell phone camera and still managed to break from this vandalism to look operatically affronted. “Ya-ha! If I weren’t in such a good fucking mood, I’d resent the implication that _I’d_ have anything to do with your damn notebook, probably so it’d make us late to the game and we could make a dramatic fucking entrance—“

“Is that cream powder you’re trying to put in that coffee?” said Mamori brightly. “Don’t be alarmed if it tastes like hydrous magnesium silicate! I gave it all to Yamato-kun so I could fit my talcum powder in the box. Because you hid my makeup case, remember? But there’s sugar if you want it.” 

“Oh, for god’s sake, your notebook is in the microwave, fucking manager.” She grabbed it and dropped a kiss on his temple as she breezed by. “Tell the fucking emperor that I’m not eating his ridiculous Boy Scouts of Kansai official recipe sakuramochi even if he _does_ manage to make it taste less like solidified sugar, he always writes like, fucking _motivational sayings_ on them—“

“I know!” called Mamori, tucking her reclaimed notebook into her track jacket. “It’s nice, isn’t it? He made some for Sena today, too!”

“What do they say, ‘IT’S MY FUCKING WIN’—“

“Nope! They just say thank you, so you owe me a midnight cake run.”

“Please, you didn’t even shake on that one, fucking manager.” He finished with the stuffed shark and held it up beatifically. She gave it an approving pat on the muzzle and he grinned as though they’d personally rescued it from stuffed animal purgatory. The shark had pointed felt teeth and the resemblance was rather striking; Mamori felt like she should be carrying a photobooth picture of them in her wallet.

“We’re going to need a cake run anyway, for the first-years’ welcoming party,” she said, “and since you were the one who wrecked Kurita’s lovely welcoming party for Sena and me when we first joined, I think it’d be nice if you were the one who stopped by Kariya, I mean, a bakery of your choice. Though if you’d like to stay and chat with them—that might be a nice opportunity to practice _a pleasant smile_ , we've talked about _a pleasant smile—_ I’ve written out directions for Agon-kun.”

He took the slip of pastel stationery from her and scanned it. “Fucking manager, these directions are for the Kariya in Chiba, it’ll take him…nine hours to make it back.” 

“Well, I’ll make sure to be absolutely apologetic about that.”

“Fuckin’ crushed.”

“Devastated.”

She pulled an appropriate face of contrition. It was much better than his given her noticeable lack of triangular teeth and haywire eyebrows. He laughed and looped an arm around her waist, reeling her in, and she set her hands on his collarbone, drumming out the upbeat rhythm of the day that had led her here, the arrangement of the secret match, the welcome letters for Ikkyu and Kazuki, who had arrived separately, a spent-but-not-entirely-wasted half hour on Hiruma’s uncivilized mattress-couch hybrid to celebrate its ritual clearing off, confirmation from Suzuna that the flight had landed, its details still open on her phone. Sena coming home. Everyone together, and apart.

She closed her eyes. Hiruma’s long fingers stepladdered up her spine and she set her forehead on his shoulder so she could tear up in peace, if that was what she felt like doing, and it was all uncharacteristically considerate until he blared, “So fucking manager, what did we have riding on this one, anyway?”

“We couldn’t bet, you menace! Because we both thought the same thing.”

“Thing is, _someone_ has a fucking gambling addiction, so I thought—“ 

They bickered about it heading down the stairs, all the way out onto the quad where they handed the stuffed shark over to Akaba, who was supposed to “get it to Mizumachi through the fucking sideburns,” and across the parking lot where everyone else was waiting with scouting clipboards and skeptical expressions. Mamori kissed Juumonji on the cheek and handed her snack basket to Yamato.

“I’m thrilled we’ll indeed see Sena-kun there,” he said. “If he’d decided to come to Saikyoudai after all, those sakuramochi would have been rather awkward.”

“Absolute prediction,” she said, saluting. He laughed.

“Well, we’re glad to go anyway, Anezaki-san. Taka and Karin and I usually get our hair styled together, so…”

“Captain Kongo is going to recruit her,” said Taka, “he just doesn’t know it yet. I received a text from Taki Suzuna, whoever that is—“

“So that was what the fucking cheerleader needed, I did her a favor last week by acquiring a small manga press and posing as the editor—but you should leave Enma’s schemes to them and worry about our own recruitment, fucking birdman! YA-HA! You think we’re going to be able to kick Sena’s ass slacking off worrying about—“

His diatribe would last for another few minutes, so Mamori went off to get the remaining things into the cars. She levered in the last box. She stood for a moment against the drivers’ side door of the truck, twirling her zipper between her fingers before pulling it to her chin.

SAIKYOUDAI, said the tracksuit, on the breast pocket. There was no part of it anymore that was white and red.

Hiruma came around the side and ratcheted the door open. They surveyed the team piling into cars. It was a good team, in ways she hadn’t expected (in addition to lovely manners, Yamato had exciting ideas about the uses of piping starches and a kitchen full of stainless-steel cookware Hiruma hadn’t yet managed to destroy with corrosive substances). She suspected that the Hiruma she had met as a Deimon first-year would have found it a perfect team, an ideal team, culled from aces around the country and already mostly disciplined, trained, ready to win. There was no need to scrape and grovel for scraps of strategy anymore. They could try the best plays in the world with minimal modification. This was where they’d been coming to, earning their right to be here with the people who made up the layer at the top. She knew that for certain, and she also knew neither she nor Hiruma would ever survey this team in the grip of a clutch moment and be able to throw a pass into the blind sky above it, its trajectory determined and steadied by faith.    

“Did you know when we set up the match?” she asked in an undertone as he was lovingly situating his Glock in the beverage holder. “That this is what Sena would choose, I mean.”

“Nah.” He fiddled with his keys. She put a hand on his knee, smoothed a thumb over the sparkplug jitter there. He swiveled to give her a bright, wicked grin. “I never know, fucking manager. I calculate, I forecast, I _project_ —“

“You hope.”

“I’ll indulge your fucking semantics for argument’s sake. But no—I didn’t know. What do you have to say about it?”

She could close her eyes and summon at will the thought of Sena closing the distance from his front door to hers, and then the forty-yard dash, and then the length of the field. Mamori had begun high school terrified of that distance, of what it would mean if she weren’t able to shield him while he closed it; she’d watched him tackled, and then—more, watched Hiruma’s arm break, watched Monta’s glove disintegrate, watched Musashi stop and begin and stop smoking again, watched and watched and stopped protecting people’s bodies in favor of their hopes until she was here, so removed from the girl she’d been that she didn’t remember what she’d been watching then anymore. She could no longer approximate the precise tenor of her fear or the wending byway of her myriad worries. She’d grown up and grown away, the way they all had. She had finished her training. She'd worked with what she had to keep them safe, it was enough—she was still, she was _always_ , head of a championship team. As she’d always done she’d given the snap count—and now the ball had arced into the air, the pieces were moving. It was nothing like it’d always been. It was exactly like it’d always been.

Hiruma was looking at her expectantly, waiting for her answer.

She said, “We didn’t come to beat the enemy—“

 

 

 

 

**1.**

 

 

 

 **  
** Hello everyone,

 

 

Hope you're doing well, and hope this email doesn't come at a bad time, or freeze your computers, or mess up your bandwidth, or distract you from important work, or hold you up when you probably have really important university things to do, or anything...if it does, I'm really sorry. I'm so sorry. I'll definitely apologize to you when I get back. There's no way to apologize for my thoughtlessness, but I'll try my best, because I'm really sorry if it did that, so please skip this part if it doesn't cause problems for

**[244 words redacted]**

I'm writing to let you know that I'll be back in Japan on the 16th of March at about 2pm, flying into Narita Airport on All Nippon Airways flight 15C, and I'm really happy to get to spend time with everyone again...

Thank you for the welcome-home firearms, pastries, and firearms disguised as pastries, I think they'll only take fourteen or fifteen hours to clear customs this time back. I got very homesick when I saw them, haha...if you like, please send some pictures of yourselves too, for me to show my American team.

I bought some Notre Dame gear for everyone that I thought you might like, so you can send me your addresses...though it's not very much, but if you would accept these humble gifts, it would make me really happy, not that you're obligated to, though, if you don't have room in your dorm room, or you're allergic to nuts and I bought something with nuts in it, not that a jersey would have nuts in it...but if something like that happens, I'm really sorry. I hope that

**[132 words redacted]**

I've attached a picture of the legacy room here, where they keep record of the exchange students who have visited, and you can see what I wrote on my plaque. I've always felt grateful that I could come here, and turn a lie into a reality, so that's how I wanted to end my time here, too...letting people know the truth. Because it wouldn't have been my legacy if I hadn't gotten caught up in a story that was already going on, so I wanted to set down what really happened. I don't need my eyeshield anymore. So I want others who also wore it to feel like they didn't go home in disgrace.

It's really amazing to me that out of nothing, you all gave me so much. That's the way I want to keep playing, is what I learned here, in a place where the team has everything...so if I'm able to, when I return home, I'd like to play at Enma, and please don't mind, but for all of you at Saikyoudai (I hope you know by now...I think you get your results a day before Enma's?) I think we might definitely defeat you!

(maybe, though, it's not a guarantee, and of course I don't mean to sound very conceited or anything, please forgive me)

Thank you to everyone. 

I'll see you all again very soon, and I know I don't need to tell you, but I will always, always, always play American football. I hope it will always be with you.

 

 

Kobayakawa Sena

Visiting Running Back

Notre Dame Preparatory High School, 2007-2008

 

 

 

(Deimon Devil Bats Regular Running Back, 2005-2007

please ignore the signature. I can't figure out how to turn it off. I've attached some pictures and videos in case you don't remember who it is, I would understand that, since it's been a very long time, but maybe after a few pictures you might remember, which would make me really happy, so thank you for your patience)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

_the end_


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